


The Sound of War (In Two Parts)

by sarken



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Gen, Juvenilia, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-01-03
Updated: 2004-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-07 19:23:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarken/pseuds/sarken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawkeye listens to the war even after it ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sound of War (In Two Parts)

I.

If he listens hard enough, he can hear the war. He's three miles from the front, and he tries not to listen so hard. Still, the compound is silent in these hours before sunup, and the quiet drives him mad. He has to listen to something, so he listens to the war. It's a twenty-four hour war. He can tune in whenever the silence becomes too much.

Charles rolls over in his cot and his sheets make that non sound of silk gliding across silk. Two weeks ago he was snoring, but the air has changed, bringing in the coldness and the silence of winter. There is no white noise; now there is grey silence. Even BJ has refrained from talking to his wife tonight.

Hawkeye listens closely for a sound other than artillery and gunfire, but all he hears is the war. The more his ears search for something between silence and war, the more he hears both at the same time. Silence is the backdrop for war; it's like a drum solo in the middle of a song. The bang bang bang is noise, not music, without the other sounds.

Someone walks past the tent, causing the gravel and the dirt to crunch. The rough sound reaches its crescendo and fades away to nothing. For Hawkeye, it's a beautiful lullaby.

 

II.

If he listens hard enough, he can hear the war. He's three months away from it, but he can still hear it as he sleeps in his childhood bed. He hears it in his dreams; he hears it in the noisy stream behind the house and the car backfiring on the road out front.

He hides, pulling the sheet (blue, dark blue, not light Korean sky blue) over his head. He covers his ears with the pillow, too, and it helps for a minute.

Downstairs, his father drops a frying pan. It sounds like artillery; it sounds like a clamp hitting the operating room floor. The walls and floors are thin and he can hear his father groan as he picks it up. The wounded groaned. Trapper and then BJ, Frank and then Charles groaned as they slept. Margaret and Colonel Potter groaned at his jokes.

He throws off the covers and swings his legs over the side of the bed. This isn't Korea. The mattress is too high above the floor.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Sound of War (the reprise remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4229883) by [NEStar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NEStar/pseuds/NEStar)




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